This week we are beginning the Tricycle Community discussion, Cultivating Compassion in Your Community, with author and religion scholar Karen Armstrong. We were recently able to speak with Karen in Washington, DC:
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It’s hardly a secret that human recklessness is reaching a critical mass, threatening not only our collective sanity but even our long-term survival. Ever more powerful and impersonal weaponry, endless warfare, super-quick changes in technology, a volatile global economy, the widening gap between the ultrarich and everyone else, climate disasters, species extinction, and ecological devastation: these crises are escalating out of control, and even what was once the most idyllic South Pacific island offers no escape. We’ve got to find ways to put our house in order, and we’ve got to do so fast; otherwise the rapid descent of our civilization towards collapse seems unavoidable.
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Tricycle: Your own tradition is the Gelugpa school of Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism. How would you define Vajrayana?
Gelek Rinpoche: The purpose of Buddhism is to cut down anger, hatred, and jealousy. The way you do it is very simple. If you cannot handle an attachment, then you completely cut out whatever helps the attachment grow. It comes down to discipline. Theravadin teachings encourage a very strict discipline. The Mahayana approach is slightly different. You make use of your attachment in order to benefit others. In the Mahayana, attachment can be a useful tool for a bodhisattva.
Tricycle: Can you give a specific example of that?
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Dana (“giving”) is the most fundamental of all Buddhist practices. It is the first topic in the Buddha’s graduated talks, the first step on the bodhisattva’s path to perfection, and the first of the ten paramitas (perfections) in the Mahayana tradition. It therefore sets the tone for all that follows in the spiritual journey.
-Andrew Olendzki, "Dana"
Tricycle's "Good Work" section, complete list:
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Patricia Kanaya Usuki was born in Toronto, Canada, to an Anglican father and a Buddhist mother. Her parents brought her up in the United Church of Canada, one of the few Canadian religious institutions that welcomed people of Asian heritage.
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Shinjo Ito, the founder of Shinnyo-en Buddhism, a Japanese Vajrayana school, once wrote, “Faith is not about preaching or philosophy. It is action to which you dedicate your whole being.” Shinnyo-en Buddhists strive to consider the hardships of others as their own and then meditate on how to respond. Reacting to the recent events in Japan—or to any disaster—is not about asking “Why?” but rather “What can I do?”
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